Introducing Australian English

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book reviews the foundational work by A. G. Mitchell and Arthur Delbridge and their traditional accent categories. It shows how Mitchell and Delbridge’s Anglo-centric and monocultural model no longer works in capturing the nuances of Australian English. The book provides a thorough discussion of Australian vowels and consonants and how “fine phonetic” detail may be applied to understand a shifting, multicultural Australia in the 21st century. It focuses on specific aspects of Australian morphosyntax and how these features position Australian English relative to other varieties, especially American English and British English. The book also focuses on some recent innovations in the sociophonetic sphere in Australian English. It deals with discussion of social and regional variation as it relates to the Australian lexicon and morphosyntactic variation.